Olivia Schenker | 2021 Research Trip
Mainland China | Visual Arts
Visual Arts
Nationality: Switzerland
Trip location: Shanghai
Partner organization: TBD
Olivia Schenker, born in 1993, is a Swiss photographer, video maker and graphic designer whose work mainly explores intimacy, sexual diversity and gender expression. After graduate in 2018 at ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, she co-founded Oil Productions alongside Nora Smith, Meli Boss, Mahalia Giotto, Julie Folly and Aruna C., a fluid collective, an incubator for ethical post-pornographic productions in Switzerland. Her work has recently been shown at Plat(T)form 2020, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and in various international festivals such as Images Vevey, Paris Photo and Villa Noailles.
Within the context of major movements regarding the politic, censorship, freedom of speech in China, the project sets out to experience how Shanghai women are sensing alternative pornographies, explicit media and art forms. Since Shanghai, like many other cultures, lacks a flourishing porn industry and a confident tradition of feminist and queer-produced erotica, how are Shanghai women rating male-oriented porn traditions and the newer taste cultures?
Naked bodies are a part of online activism. For decades, artists and activists stage nakedness as a sensual yet engaged medium to challenge conservative family planning and acts of sexual abuse.
The research project wishes to take the form of a short film, featuring Shanghai women, and the relations with censorship, nudity and identity. Mixing photography, film, documentary and performance, she wishes to take an all-encompassing and transversal look at sexualities and the means of emancipation. Pornography is for her the frankest and direct language on these issues.
